Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) Review

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is about an fascist organization that has secretly infiltrated the government and is using a combination of advanced surveillance techniques and powerful drones (okay, technically they aren’t drones because the helicarriers are unnecessarily massive and staffed with HYDRA agents for the sake of giving our heroes people to punch, but they clearly represent drones) to eliminate anyone who might possibly pose a threat to their new world order. While Captain America and the Falcon take out the “drones,” HYDRA is only truly defeated when Black Widow deposits all of SHIELD and HYDRA’s classified files onto the Internet and exposes their secrets to the general public.

“This isn’t freedom. This is fear.”

Regardless of your politics, you have to admire a $170-million dollar four-quadrant-desirous super hero action film that takes a pretty clear stance on a controversial issue. At the end there’s no question how our heroes would feel about Edward Snowden, NSA surveillance, Wikileaks, drone warfare, etc.

Best Parts:

This movie basically consists of one awesome scene after another. Even the non-action scenes, like the opener with Steve Rogers jogging circles around Sam Wilson at the National Mall, are just cool. Later Cap and Widow find an A.I. from 1970s that exists inside dozens of old reel-to-reel computers. How cool is that?

But where this movie really excels is in the amazingly choreographed action scenes:

That elevator scene OH MY GOD that elevator scene is incredibly cool. Then Cap goes right outside and beats up a damn Quinjet.

“Before we get started, does anyone want to get out?”

The freeway fight with the Winter Soldier is probably the best series of action scenes in the movie. When Cap and the Winter Soldier finally go toe-to-toe on the streets I had to rewind it and watch it again.

I loved the SHIELD tech guy standing up to Rumlow after Captain America’s big speech over the intercom. I’m a sucker for those kinds of moments.

Worst Parts:

I wish Agent 13 had a little more to do. Hopefully next time.

Why would the military discontinue the Falcon program when the tech clearly works so well?